A traffic area in the north-east district was named after the composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) by resolution of the city council on January 26, 1956.

Richard Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864, the son of a professional musician. He attended school there between 1870 and 1882. At the same time, he received music lessons and began to compose himself at an early age and received composition lessons. Strauss graduated from high school in 1882. He then studied philosophy, aesthetics and art history at the University of Munich for two semesters. Between 1883 and 1885, Strauss embarked on an artistic journey and subsequently became music director of the Meiningen court orchestra.

In 1886, Richard Strauss became the third Kapellmeister at the Munich Court Opera. In the following years, he changed positions several times and was also active as a composer, primarily of operas and orchestral works, which he published and performed with increasing success. In the years leading up to 1905, he first achieved fame in the German-speaking world and by the middle of the first decade of the new century, he was internationally renowned. In 1889, he moved to Weimar, where he was Kapellmeister at the court theater between 1889 and 1894. In 1894, Strauss conducted at the Bayreuth Festival for the first time and became the first Hofkapellmeister in Munich. In 1898 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Berlin Court Opera. In 1901, Strauss became chairman of the General German Music Association. In 1908, he was appointed general music director and director of the concerts of the court orchestra in Berlin. In 1910, he received the Bavarian Maximilian Order, which was followed by numerous other awards in the years that followed.

Strauss remained artistically active during the First World War, but left Berlin in 1918, the year of the revolution. In 1919, he was appointed director of the Vienna State Opera together with Franz Schalk. From 1924, Strauss worked as a freelance conductor and composer. At this time, he was already considered a "classic" and was highly regarded both nationally and internationally. He was the most frequently performed composer in the opera house and on the radio and his works were performed around 4,000 times in German operas between 1933 and 1942 alone.

At the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933, Strauss showed himself to be loyal to the new Nazi rulers. He was a signatory to the "Protest of the Richard Wagner City of Munich" in April 1933, which was directed against a speech given by Thomas Mann at Munich University. Mann had criticized the National Socialists' efforts to appropriate Richard Wagner, which had been sharply criticized by the "Völkischer Beobachter", among others.
At the same time, Strauss took over the conductorships of Jewish colleagues in 1933. He replaced Bruno Walter, for example, who canceled a performance at the Berlin Philharmonie due to massive threats from the Ministry of Propaganda. Strauss hesitated at first, but then accepted the engagement. The reasons for this behavior are still unclear today and range from support for the Berlin orchestra at Walter's request to public support for Nazi ideology.

Strauss acted in a similar way in the case of the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, whom he replaced at the Bayreuth Festival in 1933. Toscanini had taken part in a written protest against Hitler and called for an end to the political and religious persecution of artists in particular. After an exchange of letters with Hitler, who tried to dissuade him from canceling, Toscanini decided to give up conducting in Bayreuth.

Strauss also made positive comments about the Nazi regime in articles. His performances and statements in the young "Third Reich" had an external impact, which earned him criticism, particularly abroad. In the Nazi regime itself, Strauss' reputation rose as a result of his conducting engagements, which brought him personal advantages in the years that followed. In 1933, he was appointed Honorary President of the Deutsche Musik-Premieren-Bühne and in the same year entered into negotiations with Propaganda Minister Goebbels for the presidency of the newly founded Reich Chamber of Music.

In November 1933, Strauss was appointed president of the Reich Chamber of Music, now the most influential office in music policy in the German Reich. During his presidency until 1935, it was decided, among other things, that "non-Aryans" would not be admitted to the chamber, which severely restricted performance and earning opportunities. However, Strauss was no longer involved in the so-called de-Jewification of German cultural life, which was carried out from 1935.

Strauss thanked Propaganda Minister Goebbels for his appointment as President of the Reich Chamber of Music with a song that was a reworking of the poem "Das Bächlein".

Strauss also praised the cultural policy of the National Socialists in his acceptance speeches at the opening of the first conference of the Reich Chamber of Music in February 1934 and at the Chamber's first composers' conference. Strauss was thus committed to the cultural policy of the Nazi regime, he also supported the general political developments of the "Third Reich" and maintained close personal relationships with the new ruling elite. After Hindenburg's death in August 1934, for example, he supported Hitler's intention to combine the office of Reich Chancellor with that of Reich President and attended Hermann Göring's wedding in 1935. Strauss presented the Reich Aviation Minister with a handwritten version of his opera "Arabella".
In 1934, Strauss was also awarded the prestigious Eagle Shield of the German Reich.

However, Straussʼ position in the "Third Reich" was severely dampened in the summer of 1935 by the so-called Zweig Affair. Strauss had collaborated with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig as librettist for his opera "Die schweigsame Frau". When this was to be premiered in 1935, there was a scandal because Strauss insisted that Zweig should be named as the librettist on the announcement posters. As a result, Hitler and Goebbels canceled their attendance at the premiere at short notice. Zweig had criticized Strauss in advance for his close relationship with the regime and questioned any further collaboration. Strauss replied to the writer in a letter in which he presented his commitment as President of the Reich Music Chamber, among other things, as apolitical and entirely in the interests of the further development and safeguarding of artistic standards. He also described the Nazi press organs as smearers. The composer's letter did not reach Zweig, however, because it was intercepted by the Dresden Gestapo and forwarded to Goebbels via the Gauleitung. The latter was deeply outraged by Straussʼ statements.

As a result, Strauss was pressured by Goebbels to resign as president of the RMK. By mutual agreement, the resignation was justified to the public on health grounds.

Although the topos of Straussʼ work as RMK president "to prevent worse" was repeatedly used in the post-war period, contemporary sources show that Strauss certainly tried to achieve rehabilitation from the Nazi rulers. Strauss sought contact with Hitler, for example. Hitler ignored the attempts, but in agreement with Goebbels he did not drop Strauss completely, especially as Strauss still had a considerable artistic reputation.

On August 1, 1936, Strauss was allowed to premiere the "Olympic Anthem" he had composed in 1932 as part of the opening ceremony for the Games of the XI Olympiad in Berlin. This was followed by other activities of cultural and political significance in which Strauss was involved for the Nazi regime. These include his participation in the first Reich Music Days in May 1938 and his composition commissioned by the Ministry of Propaganda in 1940 for the 2,600th anniversary of the Empire of Japan.

The relationship between Strauss and Goebbels improved considerably by the beginning of the 1940s.

Despite this rapprochement, there were also repeated tensions between the regime and Strauss. One trigger was the composer's refusal to take in refugees and bombed-out people in his 19-room villa on the orders of the NSDAP district leadership in Garmisch. Hitler then issued a directive in 1943 ordering all NS members in leading positions to sever their ties with Strauss. The press was instructed to report only briefly on the composer and his engagements. In addition, no publications were to appear on the occasion of his 80th birthday the following year.

The fact that Straussʼ only son Franz was married to a Jewish woman also contributed to the ambivalent relationship between Strauss and the Nazi leadership. Franz Strauss had married his wife Alice in Vienna in 1924. After the National Socialists seized power in 1933, Alice Strauss and their children repeatedly suffered anti-Semitic attacks by the National Socialists. However, Strauss' good contacts prevented his daughter-in-law or his grandchildren from being persecuted. In 1938, he thanked the General Director of the Prussian State Theatres, Heinz Tietjen, for his willingness to stand up for his family with Hermann Göring.

However, the situation for Straussʼ family remained threatened by racial persecution. His daughter-in-law Alice was under house arrest in Garmisch. His grandson Richard was insulted as a "Jew" by classmates. On November 10, 1938, the SA picked up Alice Strauss from her father-in-law's house. Alice and Franz Strauss were arrested and interrogated by the Vienna Gestapo in the winter of 1943/44. It was not until March 1945 that the family received a telegram confirming that the Bavarian state government had decided not to deport Alice Strauss to a labor camp. In fact, Richard Strauss' prominence was accompanied by protection for his family.

However, Richard Strauss described the threat to his family after 1945 merely as "stupid incidents".

Strauss himself had repeatedly espoused anti-Semitic positions and stereotypes since his youth. This can be seen, for example, in letters to Cosima Wagner. A letter to the composer Hans Sommer also reveals Strauss' racist and ethnic anti-Semitism.

Strauss's biographer Dietrich Kroncke, who has dealt intensively with the composer's attitude towards Judaism, characterizes Strauss as a "salon anti-Semite" who adopted anti-Semitic positions depending on the occasion and recipient. Strauss differentiated between "the Jews" in general and his personal acquaintances, friends and family members.

Anti-Semitic statements were always used by Strauss when he either had conflicts with Jewish colleagues, such as Bruno Walter, or when topics revolved around "the Jews" in a general context.

It should be noted that Strauss made a large number of anti-Semitic statements in letters over the course of his life. This is particularly true of his youth. Above all in letters to his father, Strauss reproduced the derogatory phrases of the late 19th century.

Strauss continued to compose and conduct during the war. In 1942, he received the Beethoven Prize of the City of Vienna, donated by Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach. In August 1944, Strauss was placed on the Ministry of Propaganda's "list of gifted musicians" and even on the "special list of irreplaceable musicians". Apart from Strauss, only Hans Pfitzner and Wilhelm Furtwängler were awarded this distinction.

After the end of the war, Strauss, whose health had deteriorated, lived in Switzerland for a time. In his denazification proceedings, he was initially classified in Group 1 ("main culprit"), but was exonerated in the revision proceedings in 1948. He died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on September 8, 1949 after his last appearances in Munich in the summer of 1949.

The historical commission appointed by the city council in 2020 to review traffic areas, buildings and facilities named after people in the state capital of Wiesbaden recommended renaming Richard-Strauss-Straße because of Straussʼ presidency of the Reich Chamber of Music, which is why he was a functionary and thus actively supported the National Socialist state. He supported the Nazi regime immaterially through public speeches and publicly articulated the National Socialist ideology. Strauss benefited materially and immaterially from the cultural policy of the "Third Reich" through the awarding of honors and prize money as well as through his performance at the 1936 Olympic Games.